Yeah, we averted 'economic collapse through panic' but it's not clear that we're not going to get 'economic collapse because there's just nothing there'.
If Congress lets the US gov default on her debt, I'm never voting Democrat OR Republican again. Screw them both, and I don't care who points fingers at whom.
And here I thought you got tired of my Pollyanna. >:) Okay, yes, I do think you're being alarmist. For one, I am confident that the politicians have more self-preservation than to let the US default (and the president alone has the power to make sure the debt gets paid, if not to avoid other catastrophic consequences, like not paying the military or medicare.)
I don't think the whole economy is going to collapse, but I am worried that this is the new normal, and things are going to stay about like this (give or take some more bubbles+busts) for another decade or two before we see real and lasting improvement.
While I think things are improved from the disaster a while back, I think there may be some degree of 'new normal' in this just because we've been living beyond our means for decades now.
Our culture is finding that limitless waste, entitlement to convenience and excess, greed, and grabs for short term gain with no foresight is resulting in a crumbling empire? That the corporations that we've been giving everything to hand over fist don't actually care about us or this country? Our country where 'competitive eating' is a sport? Shocking.
Sorry about my tone, none of this is directed at you of course, I'm just frustrated and doing the clawing at the sky motion. I think we could turn this around if we started working together again with an ideal for improving our country and ourselves. Maybe realize that entities we build specifically and solely to gather money and power will just keep doing it.
My viewpoint is the human race is near the end of its lifespan, fallen prey to the evolutionary equivalent of early onset Alzheimer's. I find this makes it easier to deal with the headlong rush toward self destruction. Its just another Kobyashi Maru scenario, existence has those sometimes :(
Hee! We survived M.A.D. with the Soviet Union. I think we can get through this, too. It's a depressing time compared to the 90s when we all felt like the singularity was coming or something, but it's not as bad as the Great Depression.
For what it's worth, while I believe it's inevitable that we as a species will face a true catastrophic occurrence, be it by our own hand or a quirk of fate, there are so many factors involved in a potential scenario and in our own remarkably varied and adaptable species that I think it's possible for us to avoid eradication. In fact I think it would be very difficult to eradicate the entire human species, we're like germs or bugs. Someone somewhere is going to slip into a crack.
And lest that sound negative, I believe the world will change around us, and there will be tragic waste and injustice, but as long as humans exist, human ingenuity, expression, and development will too, and it will be influenced by what we plebes leave behind in the form of art, literature, and history.
I'm hiding under the couch from this being the new normal. I don't think the country's going to handle the reshaping of the social pyramid well. And when the pious poor finally realize the Republicans are NOT their party...(shudder)
I wouldn't put too much stock in the idea of a Christian Uprising. Pew statistics (awesome pun) quite clearly show a rising trend in American atheism and a falling-off of devout adherence to anything of faith. While 85% of Americans may still "believe in God", less than half of those go to church regularly and even fewer are willing to die for their beliefs. Now, a proletariat uprising? Personally I think that's just what America needs. ;)
since the Obama election ammunition and small arms sales have skyrocketed. There are a hard core of Christian fundies willing to die for their beliefs, they just keep putting it off and putting it off thinking maybe some regular political concern will keep life tolerable for them. But the point is they're armed and ready and the breakup of Yugoslavia shows what we can expect to come of that if they finally decide its time to go to war. When they realize that more and more of their friends are being dumped in the trash when they have no means to help these friends themselves and that their opinion leaders finally start blaming the entire political establishment for this...there's already some signs of the beginning of this . Alex Jones has a substantial audience a significant portion of whom are arriving at a bipartisan hatred of the estbalishment.
Wouldn't rest that easy. This is how things got rolling in Germany, a huge mass of people with clear enemies to blame pressing problems on following a rhetoric of "sufficient force will solve our problems".
The American revolution started with something like 3% of the population in arms. if we count 33% of the population as hard core fundies, half of that's male, half of that's potentially of fighting age, and even half of that aggravated enough to start shooting, we're over the threshold NOW if they all decide to get going, never mind opportunists or the desperate whose lives the Armed Forces wrecked and are wondering why they're still loyal to the Republic....
Wow, Rowyn was right about you being alarmist. ;D If you think that the portion of the US population that is "hardcore fundies" is anywhere NEAR 33% then I'd have to say you're BADLY off - by a full order of magnitude!
I, for one, am one of the well-armed atheists - and I think that gun sales have been skyrocketing NOT because of Obamaism and fear on the other side of the isle, but due to widespread fear of economic collapse. Should the economy collapse in the US, you can be sure that things will revert to a less-peaceful "wild west" type state of being, where owning arms will be a necessary part of "having" anything. Everyone is arming up right now, not just the fundies...
My best armed friend lives in Minneapolis and he says at the gun shows the vast majority of people there are staunch Christians and Christian milita. Minneapolis is a pretty liberal area despite being in the Midwest, was my impression. (He acts the part to avoid getting in trouble for getting his own stuff.)
The vast majority of liberals/progressives/nonfundies I know don't own a gun, never would, and have no plans to acquire them. But I don't get out much. So I dearly hope you're right all the same.
The 33% is these are the ones who identify by the technical definition of Fundamentalist. Perhaps they're not all hardcore, but they are the ones who feel the existence of non fundamentalist Americans is a state of seige upon their nice, pure communities. The essay "Red Family, Blue Family" notes that as far as these people are concerned there ISN'T such a thing as peaceful coexistence because the existence of other ways of life encourages desertion from theirs and disobedience and they won't accept that. Orcinius discusses the "Eliminationist" rhetoric and the parallels to such rhetoric in Weimar Germany...
Sweetie, less than half of the US population goes to any denomination of church, from the most liberal to the most conservative. The conservative Christians I know complain about how their congregations are small and being overrun by liberal-value churches that, for example, ordain openly gay people. I think I would have noticed if a third of my country was wanna-be killers.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: not just because I'm depressed
If Congress lets the US gov default on her debt, I'm never voting Democrat OR Republican again. Screw them both, and I don't care who points fingers at whom.
(pouts)
Re: (pouts)
I don't think the whole economy is going to collapse, but I am worried that this is the new normal, and things are going to stay about like this (give or take some more bubbles+busts) for another decade or two before we see real and lasting improvement.
Re: (pouts)
Our culture is finding that limitless waste, entitlement to convenience and excess, greed, and grabs for short term gain with no foresight is resulting in a crumbling empire? That the corporations that we've been giving everything to hand over fist don't actually care about us or this country? Our country where 'competitive eating' is a sport? Shocking.
Sorry about my tone, none of this is directed at you of course, I'm just frustrated and doing the clawing at the sky motion. I think we could turn this around if we started working together again with an ideal for improving our country and ourselves. Maybe realize that entities we build specifically and solely to gather money and power will just keep doing it.
(meeps sympathetically)
Re: (meeps sympathetically)
Re: (meeps sympathetically)
And lest that sound negative, I believe the world will change around us, and there will be tragic waste and injustice, but as long as humans exist, human ingenuity, expression, and development will too, and it will be influenced by what we plebes leave behind in the form of art, literature, and history.
Re: (meeps sympathetically)
alas
Re: alas
the american revolution started with less
Wouldn't rest that easy. This is how things got rolling in Germany, a huge mass of people with clear enemies to blame pressing problems on following a rhetoric of "sufficient force will solve our problems".
The American revolution started with something like 3% of the population in arms. if we count 33% of the population as hard core fundies, half of that's male, half of that's potentially of fighting age, and even half of that aggravated enough to start shooting, we're over the threshold NOW if they all decide to get going, never mind opportunists or the desperate whose lives the Armed Forces wrecked and are wondering why they're still loyal to the Republic....
Re: the american revolution started with less
I, for one, am one of the well-armed atheists - and I think that gun sales have been skyrocketing NOT because of Obamaism and fear on the other side of the isle, but due to widespread fear of economic collapse. Should the economy collapse in the US, you can be sure that things will revert to a less-peaceful "wild west" type state of being, where owning arms will be a necessary part of "having" anything. Everyone is arming up right now, not just the fundies...
Re: the american revolution started with less
The vast majority of liberals/progressives/nonfundies I know don't own a gun, never would, and have no plans to acquire them. But I don't get out much. So I dearly hope you're right all the same.
The 33% is these are the ones who identify by the technical definition of Fundamentalist. Perhaps they're not all hardcore, but they are the ones who feel the existence of non fundamentalist Americans is a state of seige upon their nice, pure communities. The essay "Red Family, Blue Family" notes that as far as these people are concerned there ISN'T such a thing as peaceful coexistence because the existence of other ways of life encourages desertion from theirs and disobedience and they won't accept that. Orcinius discusses the "Eliminationist" rhetoric and the parallels to such rhetoric in Weimar Germany...
I think we're in a great deal of trouble.
Re: the american revolution started with less